Items tagged with Speed

The high-speed Internet advocacy Web site, Speed Matters, has just released a report on the average Internet connection speeds by U.S. state. If you live in Rhode Island (6,769 Kbps), Delaware (6,685 Kbps), New Jersey (5,825 Kbps), Virginia (5,033 Kbps), or Massachusetts (4,564 Kbps), you can take pride that your state has one of the fastest average Internet downstream connection speeds in the U.S. But before you get too smug, compare your speed against the average 63 Mbps downstream speed that the Communications Workers of America (CWA) claims Japan has... Or South Korea (49 Mbps), Finland (21 Mbps), France (17 Mbps), or even Canada (7.6 Mbps) for that matter. Credit: Speed MattersThe report...Read more...

We recently reported on a teenager who is using GPS technology to try to get out of a speeding ticket. Website, Njection wants you to avoid getting speeding tickets in the first place by using your GPS navigation device. Njection features a tool it calls a "Speedtrap Mashup." The tool uses map data from Microsoft Virtual Earth and overlays onto that data with known speed traps and red light cameras. How are the trap and camera locations known? Because Njection users enter the information into the site, which then gets added into the site's growing database. Visitors to the site can search for speed traps and red light cameras in the U.S., Canada, and parts of Europe, and see where the traps and...Read more...

Perhaps it is just a coincidence that we're starting to hear a lot more about electric cars these days now that gas prices have hit record highs. Coincidence or not, automobiles that offer alternatives to traditional fossil-fuel-based, internal combustion engines are gearing up to hit the streets. The latest entrant to this quickly growing field is U.K.-based, Lightning Car Company, which debuted its Electric Lightning GT today at the British Motor Show in London. Similar to the all-electric, high-performance Tesla Roadster that is now available the Electric Lightning GT will also be a high-performance vehicle--and carry a similar, high-performance price tag. News.com reports that the Electric...Read more...

Update: We incorrectly reported that that Shaun Malone was found innocent of speeding. As PressDemocrat.com reports, the trial is still ongoing and is scheduled to resume on October 3rd. The judge "is expected to issue a ruling after hearing additional testimony in October, including from both sides' experts." While an 11-year old, Louisville, Kentucky boy is using a toy radar gun to get drivers to slow down through his neighborhood, the police are finding that real radar guns might not be a match for GPS--at least not when contested in court. According to a press release issued by Rocky Mountain Tracking, an 18-year old man, Shaun Malone, was able to successfully contest...Read more...

Three New NVIDIA Tools Help Developers Quickly Debug and Speed Up Video Games PerfHUD 6, FX Composer 2.5, and Shader Debugger Help Simplify Game Development SANTA CLARA, CA—JULY 17, 2008—Today’s top video games use complex programming and rendering techniques that can take months to create and tune in order to get the image quality and silky-smooth frame rates that gamers demand. Thousands of developers worldwide including members of Blizzard Entertainment, Crytek, Epic Games, and Rockstar Games rely on NVIDIA development tools to create console and PC video games. Today, NVIDIA has expanded its award-winning development suite with three new tools that vastly speed up this development process,...Read more...

Who could seriously say that in these troubled times, police don't need all the help they can get? And, quite honestly, particularly in the neighborhood (no pun intended) of speeders. Even without watching TV shows such as TruTV's Speeders, all one has to do is look around to see that one reason people may not want a new 55 or even 60 MPH maximum speed limit, despite high gas prices, is that they looooove to drive fast.Landon Wilburn, 11, grew tired of speeders zipping through his subdivision, so after growing hoarse shouting at them, he decided to take matters into his own hands.The youngster, who used to shout at speeders to slow down as they drove through the Stone Lakes subdivision...Read more...

If you were the type to think of 2.5" drive technology only in terms of notebook products, then recently, Western Digital probably helped expand your horizons a bit. With the release of their VelociRaptor 300GB SATA hard drive, mainstream users were exposed to the advantages of the high transfer rates associated with 2.5" platters rotating at 10K RPM, with four access heads pulling data. Though packed in a 3.5" form-factor for desktop system compatibility, the 2.5", dual 150GB platter platform that the VelociRaptor was built on allows it to outperform virtually all standard 3.5" SATA drives on the market today, even WD's 10K RPM Raptor WD1500 series. However, the VelociRaptor...Read more...

When you consider notebooks are easily the highest growth segment of the PC industry, isn't it sort of odd that we don't hear more about new product refresh efforts from the major OEMs? The simple fact of the matter is, that while we hear of new desktop and workstation technologies on a regular basis, core notebook architectures, more often than not go through more evolutionary enhancements, rather than revolutionary overhauls. Perhaps this is because mobile architectures in general are derivatives of their desktop counterparts that are tuned for low power consumption. Major players like Intel, AMD and NVIDIA currently take a top down approach, building high-end products...Read more...

WD DELIVERS NEW HIGH-PERFORMANCE 1 TB DRIVEFastest 3.5-inch 7200 RPM Drive on the Market LAKE FOREST, Calif. – June 10, 2008 - WD (NYSE: WDC) today launched its new line of WD Caviar Black 7200 RPM 3.5-inch SATA (Serial ATA) hard drives for high-performance desktop, workstation and multi-drive systems. Available in capacities of 750 GB and 1 TB, WD Caviar Black hard drives are part of a new family of WD product categories designed to simplify the buying experience for customers worldwide.WD was the first company to introduce a hard drive, optimized for low power consumption, using GreenPower technology, and is raising the bar for the high performance desktop market with WD Caviar Black. ...Read more...

Om Malik at Gigaom has made an interesting analysis of the effects of widespread broadband penetration into the US market. As the demand for broadband tapers off because the pool of persons that don't yet have it slowly dries up, there's really only one thing the providers have left to sell: faster speeds.It should come as no surprise that the carriers have let go of incremental speed upgrades and have gone ahead and doubled or tripled the speeds of their offerings. Why? Because bumping speed to 2 Mbps from 1 Mbps doesn’t really feel like a big boost. A 6X speed bump, on the other hand, makes the Internet much faster — and worth paying for. Suddenly, Hulu and YouTube become much more fun to watch....Read more...

Our biggest complaint with our DirecTiVo before it died: speed, or rather lack thereof. It's a common complaint.TiVo software version 9.3 will significantly speed up nearly all of the common tasks that customers do with a TiVo. No longer will the DVR pause for nearly a minute while it reorders Season Pass priorities or stall for half a minute when a Season Pass is created. Users will see between 10 and 30 second speed improvements in these areas.In addition, the interface will feel crisper, with TiVo Central (the default dashboard that pops up after you press the TiVo button on the remote) loading 1 second faster. Scrolling through the Now Playing list of recordings and changing the channel...Read more...

No, seriously. Verizon is one of a group called the P4P Working Group, and they are trying to increase P2P efficiency.Providers have banned, blocked or slowed peer-to-peer traffic in their efforts to keep the flood of music, video, games and software from overwhelming their networks. But Verizon Communications Inc. has broken ranks with the industry and announced Friday that it plans to help its users share files faster — at least those who do it legally.With researchers at Yale University and a group of companies that make file-sharing software, Verizon collaborated to enable faster downloads for consumers and lower costs for participating ISPs.File-sharing accounts for one-third of all...Read more...